Manufacturing change

By Kim Berry | 10 July 2019

An innovative project to turn food waste into chicken feed is being brought to life by a transportable processing unit designed by RMR Process.

Australians eat more than 10 million chickens a week and 13 million eggs a day. In the Sydney metropolitan area alone, 190,000 tonnes of commercial and industrial food waste – nine per cent of that segment’s waste stream – went to landfill. In total food waste terms, 97 per cent goes to landfill.

The connection between our consumption of chicken and how we deal with food waste is not immediately apparent, but consultant Norm Boyle and food process and facility design firm RMR Process CEO Peter Taitoko are set to change that with the Food Recycle project.

Boyle spoke with Food & Drink Business about an ambitious project to turn food waste into chicken feed that could be rolled out by the end of the year. He outlined how the poultry industry is expected to double by 2050, and “that is not that far away”.

While chicken farms can increase their production, the question of how you feed them is more pressing, Boyle says. There’s no more agricultural land to grow the crops they eat, so how do you do that?

The added challenge is that the poultry farming industry is one of the most tightly regulated in the world.

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